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Suicide Squad Fans Petition To Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes Over Negative Reviews (variety.com)
The much-anticipated movie Suicide Squad has largely failed to impress film critics and normal people alike. People are leaving the theaters disappointed, with a firm belief that DC Universe has let them down again. Vanity Fair goes as far as saying, "Suicide Squad isn't even the good kind of bad," adding that "I'd have to imagine that most fans of Harley Quinn -- male, female, gay, straight -- will be disappointed." The ratings are super low at IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes as well. Amid these reviews, the fans of the film have launched a Change.org petition with the intent of shutting down film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Variety adds: Abdullah Coldwater, the DC Comics fan who drafted the petition, accused the site of giving "unjust bad reviews" that "affects people's opinion even if it's a really great [movie]." He added, "Critics always give The DC Extended Universe movies unjust bad reviews." The petition has received over 13,000 signatures as of this post. "Suicide Squad," which stars Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie and is one of the most highly-anticipated movies of the summer, currently has an approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 34 percent. In comparison recent critical disgrace "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" settled at 27 percent on 344 critiques, whereas Marvel's "Captain America: Civil War" garnered a laudatory 90 percent with 320 critics chiming in.
The site owners? The police?
My understanding (from a couple of people I know who were involved with the movie) was that the first pass (ie at the end of filming in July of 201) of the movie was disappointing, but serviceable (ie make its money back in the theatres and turn a profit on streaming and DVDs). Test audiences' biggest problem was that they didn't know many of the various minor villains (ie Killer Croc, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang) and were confused by Harley Quinn because in the cartoons, she has a definite costume and doesn't use a baseball bat.
Then the trailer was created which made it seem like a *much* different movie than it actually was. The trailer, (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...) generated a lot of buzz due to the energy the characters gave off which wasn't in the original film. The Warner suits realized that there was a disconnect between the trailer and reality, so early last fall, they ordered a script update with reshoots so that the movie would better match the trailer.
The script changes were complete and new filming was finishing up in Vancouver when Deadpool came out and did not affect the final version of the film. It may have confirmed the Warner suits' that they were on the right track, but Deadpool didn't force the decision one way or another. I was told in December that Warner had managed to turn a fair movie that avid comic book readers will like into a "shitty" one that wouldn't work for anybody with the script and filming changes.
The DC Universe movie problems go a lot deeper than trying to copy Deadpool or Avengers movies - it basically comes from a lack of central planning that Marvel/Disney/Sony have in spades as well as difficulty in listening to the casual movie goer.
One of the friends, who's a PA on Suicide Squad, said that fanboys know the characters and that's who DC/Warner tends to listen to rather than somebody off the street who has heard of Batman and Superman but can't name anybody in their rogue's gallery other than The Joker and Lex Luthor and needs an introductory movie for them and the universe, the same way Marvel does.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Yeah, I misread the original summary, and made a follow up post to look at DC titles.
" I will say Batman vs Superman was a lot better than critics gave it credit for."
Rotten tomatoes tends to agree with you. There is a big disconnect between critics and audiences on that one... 27% to 65%. However, I think the critics are "right" in the sense that if you try to look at that movie with a critical eye that it's as dumb as a bag of hammers. But it's a 'fan service' movie. So the audiences that went to see, by and large, got what they wanted and were happy with it.
Ghostbusters was, if anything, an example how much you can bully and bribe critics today. The comparison between the "professional" and the "user" verdict speaks volumes on pretty much every review aggregation page.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem was that people were claiming it sucks the moment the movie was announced. They knew nothing about it whatsoever, except for who the leads were. People were not keeping an open mind on it, they declared it bad merely because it was a remake.